Colleen Cason: Pioneer archaeologist dug in her heels to preserve Ventura's history

The Albinger Archaeological Museum is next to Mission San Buenaventura and focuses on five different cultures spanning 3,500 years of history.
Juan Carlo, Ventura County Star

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John Foster looks over artifacts on display in the Albinger Archaeological Museum next to Mission San Buenaventura in downtown Ventura. He credits his longtime colleague Roberta "Bobby" Greenwood with framing the history of Ventura, which paved the way for the museum.(Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)Buy Photo

When something or someone is said to be underfoot, it means they are an obstacle, a hindrance, a pest.

A long-ago Ventura developer likely described Roberta “Bobby” Greenwood that way. But if the pioneering archaeologist had not been a stumbling block in his path, it’s a safe bet there would be 12 1970s-era houses next to Mission San Buenaventura instead of the Albinger Archaeological Museum.

Arguably the person most responsible for showing Ventura its hidden past passed away in Los Angeles on July 3. And although she spent her 70-year career identifying the age of the objects she unearthed, she never revealed her own, said her longtime colleague John Foster.

In every other way, though, she was generous in sharing information.

“Bobby took the puzzle pieces from the past and started to frame the history of Ventura so everyone could enjoy it,” Foster said.

The Ivy League-educated Greenwood never feared getting down and dirty. She began excavating around Ventura in the 1950s. She uncovered and plotted the course of the aqueduct that supplied water to Mission San Buenaventura as well as excavating Chumash settlements along the Ventura River.

She would later discover the sites of Ventura’s early city halls, going so far as to analyze the contents of their privies. The men’s necessary was full of whiskey bottles and weapons; the women’s, “medicine” bottles and two coyote heads.

Ventura had a sketchy history when it came to preserving its own history. In the 1960s, city leaders inexplicably decided to turn a pioneer cemetery into a park, knocking down the tombstones and carelessly discarding them.

And when the redevelopment boom of the 1970s was going full throttle, the plan was to tear down the muffler shop next to the old mission and build houses.

Colleen Cason(Photo: Joseph A. Garcia)

But as workers dug up the shop’s parking lot, thousands of years of history emerged. The Los Angeles Times reported the initial inventory as “Spanish crucifixes, Chumash beads, Chinese pottery and stone bowls dating back to 1600 BC.”

Alarmed that the bulldozer used to wreck the parking lot shattered artifacts, volunteers from the Ventura County Archaeological Society and Chumash leaders asked the city to stop the project. Against all odds, officials agreed and hired Greenwood to oversee the dig.

Abandoned mission uncovered

Greenwood and her crew of 30 soon discovered the foundation of what appears to be an abandoned mission that predated the building of San Buenaventura in 1782. They unearthed the small homes of Native Americans who toiled at the mission, giving a picture of their daily lives.

Inwardly strong but outwardly unassuming, Greenwood developed a rapport with city leaders. Her crew took up residence at the dilapidated Cecil Hotel on Ventura Avenue. And the tanned, outdoorsy archaeologists challenged the city’s desk jockeys to weekly volleyball matches.

Archaeologist Roberta Greenwood poses with a tool of her trade in this undated photo.(Photo: PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY GREENWOOD AND ASSOCIATES)

Greenwood’s effort started in the summer of 1974 and was so productive that by the fall of that year, the city voted to buy back the land from the developer and shortly thereafter decided to build the Albinger to showcase the newly discovered treasures. It is believed to be the first museum of its kind in any American city.

This stunned Foster, who took part in the excavation.

“Usually the way it goes is the stuff deemed important is removed, and the site is destroyed,” said Foster, who went on to become Greenwood’s business partner and to this day a volunteer at the Albinger.

To Greenwood, the work started at the dig but ended at the desk. She saw her mission not just as science but as storytelling. Foster recalls many nights of collaborating with her long past 10 p.m. to find just the right word to finish an article or report.

She went on to write the award-winning book “Down by the Station: Los Angeles Chinatown 1880-1933,” based on her late 1980s excavation of the once-thriving community that was demolished to make way for Union Station in 1933.

Respected historian Linda Bentz credits Greenwood with pioneering historical archaeology in the Southland’s Chinese communities and being instrumental in directing artifacts into the possession of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California.

“She was meticulous in her work, just a wonderful woman and my mentor,” said Bentz, who has written extensively on the history of Chinese immigrants in Ventura.

Without Greenwood’s work, Venturans might never have known that 3,500 years of human history sits below one city block.